1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to sintered metal bonded segments with an abrasive action, containing particles of hard material, for tools for machining or cutting hard and/or brittle materials with a tool support which accommodates the segments, wherein each segment is made up of individual segment modules that are variously formed.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Abrasively configured segments for tools, for example in the form of cutting segments for drill bits, milling cutters, chainsaws, saw blades, parting grinder wheels, hollow trepanning bits, grinding blades or in the form of hollow rollers for band saws are essential for machining or cutting materials.
The prior art is represented by German Patent Reference DE 196 50 480 A1, European Patent Reference EP 0 857 552 A2, German Patent Reference DE 44 24 093 A1, U.S. Pat. No. 5,868,885 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,518,443, to name a very few examples. The tools and segments for the tools are produced using diamonds as the hard material and are correspondingly expensive to manufacture.
Among the toolmaking equipment for manufacturing diamond tools in all shapes and for all applications, the manufacturers of such tools keep an enormous variety of designs and production tools for those designs, for example the various segments and segment sizes for the widest imaginable range of tools. The result of this is exceedingly high production and storage effort, for example in the case of diamond saw blades, so that cutting segments in all desired radii are available. The essential production tools are expensive and because of their sophisticated construction are also delicate.
Manufacturers of diamond tools often find that they cannot ship or perhaps even manufacture the tool desired for a special customer requirement, quickly enough. This applies for diamond tools in all industry sectors, from the professional xe2x80x9chigh-endxe2x80x9d tool down to the supermarket product. At the same time, the tool must comply with the highest possible standards of safety and performance.
A cutting tool is known from European Patent Reference EP 0 540 566 B1 in which the configuration of the individual cutting segments changes at a constant rate over the length of the segment, such as the quality and/or the concentration of the abrasive grain is varied at a constant rate. This may be achieved by constructing the cutting segment from a single piece, or also by combining multiple parts to form the cutting segment. In the latter case, when viewed from one direction, for example the abrasive grain then becomes less concentrated at a constant rate.
The cutting segment described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,518,443 is also made from a single piece and requires a great deal of manufacturing effort due to the varying concentrations of hard materials in the different areas.
One object of this invention is to provide a multiplicity of tool segment shapes containing hard material particles, particularly very hard materials such as diamonds or cubic boron nitride, to be accomplished in a reasonable manner, and in same manner to arrange the manufacture and storage thereof more economically and to reduce costs. A further object is to improve the performance of the tools, such as to enable optimum use of the hard material particles, and to make segments that are more resistant to wear, and which therefore last longer.
These and other objects are solved by this invention because sintered metal bonded segments with abrasive action are constructed from individual segment modules having identical construction and the segment modules are manufactured by high-temperature isostatic pressing and the segments are constructed from segment modules presenting alternating concentrations of hard material particles starting from the leading area and progressing towards the trailing area of the segment in the direction of motion of the segment, and/or from segment modules including varying areas having alternating concentrations of hard materials that are arranged perpendicularly to the direction of motion of the segment. According to one embodiment of this invention, the segment modules may have the same or differing shapes and may be constituted from the same sintered metal materials and/or hard material particles, or from sintered metal materials and/or hard material particles that differ both qualitatively and quantitatively. Advantageous configurations of this invention are described by features of the claims.
One concept fundamental to the principle of this invention is simplification of the geometry so that a modular construction enables drastically reduced storage requirements, improved tool quality and durability, and virtually limitless design variations for the product.
This invention is the first to describe sintered metal bonded segments with abrasive action that are constructed in modules and graduations for machining or cutting materials. Thus, a sawtooth effect is also achieved according to this invention by the alternating concentrations of hard material particles.
According to this invention, a small number of basic types of segment module is sufficient to obtain a multiplicity of different segments in terms of shape and quality by mixing, combining and arranging similar and/or differing segment modules.